Professor and film scholar Charles Musser situates director Richard Maurice within the “Pioneers of African American Cinema” collection and the larger story of black film, touching on Maurice’s mysterious persona and how he was influenced by fellow black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.
Film historian S. Torriano Berry discusses the works of James and Eloyce Gist (featured in “Pioneers of African American Cinema”), which he’s studied for twenty years.
A “cinemagazine” newsreel, rediscovered in the UK, captured this brief but remarkable clip of Oscar Micheaux on the set of one of his films, probably THE BRUTE (1920), which has not survived. While Micheaux is clearly performing for the newsreel camera, the one-minute sequence nonetheless provide...
This program, featuring comments from Ossie Davis, provides an brief introduction to the Tyler, Texas Black Film Collection of race films from the 1930s and ’40s.